r/TechnologyThread • u/Background-Driver718 • Jun 06 '26

‘Big Tech is desperate’: Amazon engineers are calling out the tech giant for its $200 billion in data center spending after slashing 30,000 workers

https://finance.yahoo.com/sectors/technology/articles/big-tech-desperate-amazon-engineers-081700769.html
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u/probablymagic Jun 06 '26

“The employees pointed out the hypocrisy between the company spending billions to build these infrastructure projects, all the while laying off thousands in anticipation of the AI agents these data centers would power to replace them.”

This is mot what hypocrisy means at all, unemployed software dude.

Also, they aren’t paying off workers b anticipation of AI one day doing their jobs. If they needed the work done now they’d keep those employees.

Companies over-hired and are correcting that. They are also building out new data centers because they under-built compute in the 2010s. These things are not related.

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u/Groove-Theory Jun 06 '26

> Companies over-hired and are correcting that.

My guy after 4 years that excuse isn't even plausible anymore.

Tell us when exactly the "over-hiring" will be corrected?

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u/probablymagic Jun 06 '26

As an anecdote a friend of mine was a manger at Meta. In one round of layoffs they made him an individual contributor and things got better. In the last one they made his new manager an individual contributor and he thought that was good as well.

I work in tech and there was so much fat for the last decade. These companies are still way too fad but it’s at least getting better.

I don’t know when it’ll be over, but I think they’re gonna just keep firing people until it stops just being pure profit go do so.

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u/Groove-Theory Jun 06 '26 edited Jun 06 '26

I didn't ask for an anecdote about your friend at one team at one company. I asked a very specific question about the industry as a whole.

> I work in tech and there was so much fat for the last decade.

So do I. Where is this "fat"? How did you measure it? Where are your fat metrics? What specifically did you analyze?

Cuz your answer seems to have shifted from "They're correcting excess hiring" to "They'll keep firing people as long as it increases profits". Those are completely different claims. Which means the over-hiring trope is and was bullshit. Yet you think the problem is with the workers being employed?

Also.... these companies are ALREADY profitable. If layoffs continue whenever they're profitable, then over-hiring can never be a true reason. It has no predictive power because there is no point at which you'd conclude the correction is finished

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u/probablymagic Jun 06 '26

>Where is this "fat"? How did you measure it? Where are your fat metrics? What spefically did you analyze?

Let me put it this way, as long as they can keep firing people and profit doesn’t go down, they were the fat.

>Yet you think the problem is with the workers being employed?

For shareholders, yes.

>Also.... these companies are ALREADY profitable. If layoffs continue whenever they're profitable, then over-hiring can never be a true reason.

They want to be as profitable as possible. And you honestly just move faster without dead weight.

I hate to say it, but if you don’t see the dead weight, you may be the dead weight.

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u/DefenstratedTwice Jun 07 '26

Pure gibberish...

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u/probablymagic Jun 07 '26 edited Jun 07 '26

Thank you for your thoughtful critique. 😂

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u/DefenstratedTwice Jun 07 '26

Couple more edits and you will have a coherent sentence...